eChai Showcase : Fxchng

Today on #eChaiShowcase we are introducing an brilliant startup from Vadodara, Fxchng - a newly launched Social Classifieds Platform which engages your friends and family to help you buy, sell and trade faster.

Here is the insightful and candid conversation with Rauf Saiyed, Founder, Fxchng. Rauf has done masters in computer science from Rochester Institute of Technology, New York and is currently in India to build Fxchng. He earlier founded - Cazback which is a very simple and user-friendly platform for consumers to shop online and earn cash discounts from all their online activities every time.

 Join eChai.in to ask any specific questions to Rauf.

How did you come up with the idea of 'Fxchng' ?

With so much going on in the online classifieds market in India, the shift is very prominent from print media to digital media. Further, none of the sites in India make use of social connectivity of users to make their lives easier. Having heard of some bad experiences from users, it encouraged us to find a way to connect the online community in a social way so that friend and influencers can become your help in daily activities.

What problem are you solving?

In the current online classifieds market, even big players are fighting with issues like spam and fraudulent activities. There is no way a buyer or seller can blindly trust each other while doing a transaction. So many people fall victim of such frauds and lose their valuable time and money. Incorporating social circles and putting connections ahead makes it easier and transparent for buyers and sellers to complete a deal with confidence. Being informed about activities in your social circle and getting help from friends and family in turn makes your search faster and easier.

How does it work? 

Fxchng leverages the power of social circles and hence user needs to sign up using their Facebook account.. Once signed up, just like any other classifieds site, users can post ads and browse through various local listings. After posting an ad, seller can share their ad on various social networks to keep their friends informed. This in turn makes the ad viral and increases the chances of reaching to a potential buyer in a much shorter time. While browsing through the listings, users can see mutual friends between buyers and sellers. Users can send message to these mutual connection to get connected to the seller.

What is your target market?

We are targeting young and educated people from age range of 22 to 35 in metros and tier 2-3 cities. We are also focusing on service class people who would get benefit from this platform in selling their used stuff to earn quick money.

What is your competitive advantage?

Fxchng is uniquely positioned to exploit the relationship and power of social connections and location based discoveries in the classifieds ad space.

Key Competitive Advantage:

- Leverage the power of Social Connections & endorsement to build transaction trust.

- The ‘community’ and trust factor

- Location based discoveries

- Innovative and unique payment options. (coming soon!!!)

- Help build a trusted local brand, whereby local businesses can use our platform to enhance their brand’s exposure to new customer through referrals by harnessing the power of endorsements of their clients’ friends & family.

How much time did it take you from conceptualization of 'Fxchng' to actually launching it in the market ?

For a startup, development is an ongoing process which will never end. It took us a while to build the entire product around the initial idea.. Once we finalized the core features, it took us around 10 months to develop a prototype. After the initial testing phase, we again revised our feature list and added a few new things which extended the development process. Finally we launched a beta version in Dec 2014 and in parallel we are working on next set of features which will be launched by June 2015.

Tell us more about your team?

We are a team of 7 members – 2 designer, 3 developers, one CTO and ME. I am the founder and Chief Everything Officer. I poke my nose in each and every sector – including conceptualization, design, development, strategy planning, marketing etc.

Apart from me, we have Nitin Patel as our mentor, chief technical guy and our technical consultant. He handles everything related to technology and helps us in making the product more user-friendly and unique. He has 10+ years of experience in development and running a successful IT firm.

What is your technology stack?

We are using PHP/MySQL and we are hosted on cloud.

How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies?

We are planning to go local and create communities in colleges/ workplaces with higher interconnectivity. This way, even a small group of people from a city can get benefited from core features of Fxchng. We are also doing online marketing, SEO and Facebook promotions to spread the awareness. We encourage our exisiting users to share the word with their social connections to help us reach to a wider audience.

What is the revenue model of 'Fxchng' ?

Currently Fxchng plans to generate revenues from Google Ads. We will soon introduce the freemium model where users can pay to create a premium ad in order to gain maximum visibility.. Once we get a decent number of daily users, we can have other ways to advertise on the website and create multiple revenue channels.

What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision?

We want to place Fxchng in a top-notch place in the online classifieds segment with differentiating features and offerings which will make user lives easier. People should get addicted to this social classifieds network like they are with facebook.. Further, we want to go global and create an unmatched experience for the audience of the world. We don’t want to compete with fellow players in the market.. We just want to become a threat for them.

Early Years : When did it first strike you to begin this venture and why? Your Eureka Moment (the moment you decided to be an entrepreneur).

I’ve been an entrepreneur for 4+ years now and this is my 2nd venture. Through these years, I have learnt lot many things and I try to incorporate my learnings in my new ventures. In recent years, India has seen a shift in digital marketing and online classifieds as compared to print media. A few classifieds sites are doing very well while there are prevailing issues of spam and lack of trust while making a deal online. I witnessed a few people in my close circle becoming victims of such fraudulent activities, that’s when I realized there is a gap in the market which is yet not addressed and can solve the problem to a certain extent.

Sales : How did you make your first sale and how much time it took you from starting up to closing the first sale ? How long is your sales cycle ? 

We are not an e-commerce company. Our first user came in within 2 days of our launch and since then we have been getting a steady traffic of new users. We have recently started our marketing activities and working hard on spreading the awareness about the concept across nation.

Company Culture : What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

 What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

Partnerships : What are your views about finding the right Co-Founder ? How did you find your business partner? According to you who is the ideal business partner?

 I am the only founder of Fxchng and thus I won’t be able to give a better answer to this. Still, it’s better to have a co-founder with totally opposite skill-set than you have, so that you can easily divide tasks and give your best to achieve goals. Having a perfect co-founder, you can achieve success in half time. ;)

Hiring : How did you hire your first employee ? And in general what's your hiring policy ? How important have good employees been to your success?

 My first employee was from my previous venture and thus it was a tried and tested hiring for me. Rest, we make sure to get only those people on board who have a soft corner for startups. Your employee should be as excited as you to work on your product and shouldn’t always look at short term benefits.

Learning : How did you handle your disappointments and failures?

Disappointments are temporary while failures are lessons for your life. At points, we take a break, think through the problem and start afresh with more positive energy to complete the goals and correct our mistakes. At certain points, we also had to accept our failures and had to deal with unexpected results. It’s hard though, but you have to restart at one point and then you have to learn from your mistakes to make the next day even more positive and fruitful.

Work-Life Balance : How do you find a balance between work family and social life?

Being an entrepreneur, you get your freedom as well as liabilities. I am not-so-good in balancing both in my life. But I try to manage my time in a way that I don’t miss on the life completely.

Risks : Which was the boldest decision you ever made to have this venture work?

 When the classifieds market is booming in India, All big players are playing their cards in alluring users and tones of investment money flowing in, being a newbie and trying to penetrate the market would be the toughest task. I am not sure if this is the perfect time or not, But I will try and make the most out of it while riding the wave.

What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?

A startup needs anything and everything from like-minded people.. Any help in making the product better would be greatly appreciated. We also want help from people in marketing, advertising and media sectors who can help us reach every corner of India and let people know about this awesome portal.